Guns and Roses

Safe

Saint-Laurent Leo

The room smelled like sweat and cheap coffee.

One table. Two chairs. A flickering fluorescent light overhead like something straight out of a low-budget crime movie. The kind of setup that was supposed to shake you down, make you sweat your secrets out onto the table.

But I’d been in tighter spots than this.

I sat back in the metal chair, legs spread, arms crossed like I had all the time in the world. The detective. Middle-aged, balding, trying real hard to look scary, paced in front of me, his badge swinging like a pendulum.

“You wanna explain why you were the last person seen with Claudia Jenkins?” he asked, voice all gruff and full of threat.

I looked him straight in the eyes.

“I want my lawyer.”

His nostrils flared. “You sure you wanna play this game, kid?”

I didn’t answer.

He slammed his hands on the table, like that would do something.

But all I said was, “I know my rights. I ain’t saying a word ‘til my lawyer gets here.”

They hated that. Hated when street kids knew the rules.

They left me in the room for a while after that, hoping silence would break me.

Didn’t work.

An hour later, the door creaked open and he walked in. Damien. My guy. Old school. Slick suit, gray beard, faded scars that told stories he never spoke out loud. He used to run with the kind of people who made this whole police department twitch. Now he wore ties and used “objection” like a blade.

He owed me one. And now I was cashing it in.

He sat across from me, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “Leo, you gotta give me something. Anything.”

I stared back at him. “I didn’t kill her.”

“I know. But they’ve got footage. You were at the scene. There’s enough to tag you for obstruction—hell, maybe even accessory if they stretch it.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said again, slower.

“And what did you see?”

I clenched my jaw. Didn’t say a damn word.

Damien exhaled sharply, rubbing his forehead. “Listen to me. I’ve been in this game longer than you’ve been alive. If you stay quiet when they’ve got partials, timing, witnesses, they’re gonna come for you like wolves. They want someone to blame.”

“Then let them hunt,” I snapped. “I ain’t snitching. You know that.”

He looked at me long and hard. Like he wanted to punch me. Or hug me. Maybe both.

“You’re looking at time, Saint. Real time. This ain’t juvie anymore. You wanna keep playing gangster, fine. But you’re gambling with your life now.”

“I’m not playing anything,” I said, voice like steel. “I just don’t talk. Not to cops. Not to feds. Not even if the damn CIA comes knocking with a lie detector and a Bible. What I know stays with me.”

He leaned back, let out a bitter laugh. “You’re still that stubborn little punk I pulled out of that mess back in Eastbrook.”

“Damn right.”

Silence settled between us again.

He shook his head slowly. “Alright. Then I’ll do what I can. But don’t expect miracles.”

“Never do.”

As he walked out the door, I stared at the wall across from me. Blank. Cold. Unforgiving.

Just like the world I’d grown up in.

I could’ve said something.

I could’ve told them the truth.

But the truth don’t belong to everybody. Not the cops. Not the lawyers. And not even her.

Especially not her.

I leaned my head against the cold wall of the holding cell, breathing in the stale air that clung to the steel bars like regret. The buzz of the overhead light hummed like a mosquito in my skull, but I didn’t flinch. I was used to that kind of noise. It sounded like the inside of my head on a calm day.

They think silence means guilt. But they don’t know what it means to carry something so heavy it cracks the bone.

They don’t know what it means to protect someone by letting them hate you.

Genevieve.

She was the only person who made me feel like maybe I had a heart buried somewhere underneath all this chaos. That maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t as far gone as they all thought I was.

But I am far gone.

I remember the beach.

She wore red like it was stitched from sin and salvation. A flower tucked behind her ear, eyes sharp with white liner, and that smile. Damn, that smile. It knocked the wind out of my chest like a sucker punch.

She was sunshine. But not the soft kind.

The dangerous kind. The kind that burned right through you if you stared too long.

And I did. I stared. Like a fool.

Now she looks at me like I’m dirt under her shoes. Slapped me across the face the last time we talked. Called me a coward. A jerk.

But I didn’t even blink.

That’s the thing with being a psychopath.

You could turn your heart off like a switch. No tremble. No tear. Just ice.

And I learned how to do that young, real young.

My file says intermittent explosive disorder. My therapist called it “emotional dysregulation.” My mother called it the devil’s grip.

Whatever.

They put me in a facility when I was eleven after I broke a kid’s jaw with a metal chair. He called me a bastard. I didn’t even remember hitting him until someone showed me the bloodstains on my shirt.

I spent most of my life in places with padded walls and metal doors that only opened from the outside. Learned how to play nice. Learned when to smile, when to stay quiet, when to look like I was getting better.

But inside?

Inside I was building a kingdom of chaos no one could touch.

And then Genevieve walked in with her soft hands and hard words. Demanding kindness. Demanding that I feel.

She didn’t know what she was asking for.

Because if I gave her the truth…what I saw in that bathroom, what I knew happened to Claudia, her life would explode. Her father’s badge would mean nothing. Her world would burn from the inside out.

So I kept my mouth shut.

I’ll take the fall.

Better she thinks I’m a killer than find out the truth and have to live with that.

Better I rot in a cell than watch her eyes go hollow.

She deserves better than my mess. Better than a boy made of knives and bad decisions.

Let her hate me.

At least she’ll be safe.